Julia Mintzer

An alum of the Royal Opera House’s Mentorship Programme, Julia Mintzer has been nominated for two Off West End Awards for Best Opera Production for Bluebeard’s Castle and Der Vampyr with Gothic Opera. A 2017 National Opera Association Directing Fellow, her interactive theater piece Pizza Parlance was listed in Nombre Art Magazine's "5 Must-Sees of Venice Biennale" and revived for NWR-Forum Düsseldorf and the Toronto Museum of Contemporary Art.  She recently directed Nathan Gunn and Indira Mahajan in Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Tibetan Book of the Dead for Opera Grand Rapids and will make directorial debuts this year in Germany and The Netherlands.

In the 2023/24 season, she directed Tosca for Devon Opera, L’Elisir d’amore for Catholic University, and co-directed The Threepenny Opera for OVO Theatre Company at the Roman Theatre Festival in St Albans, with further performances at The Minack Theatre (Cornwall) and the Cockpit Theatre (London). Julia’s participation in Dutch National Opera’s Towards a New Dramaturgy workshop was sponsored by Britten Pears Arts, and she recently directed a festival of American opera at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp. She revived East West Street for Nova Touring at the Alliance Francaise in Washington DC, starring Katja Riemann and Laurent Naouri. Currently, she is developing Bread and Circuses: The Wrestling Opera with the support of a Bogliasco Fellowship and Arts Council England, and leading Hooran Studios, a team of Tehran-based animators, on Zal and the Phoenix, a multimedia show for children.

Her production of Savitri for Hampstead Garden Opera was the first fully staged opera in London since the start of the pandemic, hailed as “dignified and rewarding” by Opera Magazine and for its '“sensitive direction that traded in closeness and distance” by The Times. Julia led an all-female cast of La Bohème for MassOpera, hailed by The Theater Times as “a fascinating, high-energy production.” With the support of the Bogliasco Foundation, she co-created On Behalf of a Madman, premiered by Grand Harmonie and revived for The Maltings Theatre on US Election Day, praised by The Stage as “an inventive mashup.”

She directed the first full staging of Fidelio with historical instruments in America, with period orchestra Grand Harmonie at Princeton University. Julia was sponsored by the European Network of Opera Academies to direct excerpts from Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Opera Academy of Verona, and invited back by ENOA to direct and develop new work at the Helsinki Festival.

Julia has led seminars on the integration of technique and interpretation at the University of Cologne's Institute for Art and Art Theory, and has been a guest lecturer at University of Liverpool, Catholic University, and New England Conservatory.   She is a graduate of The Juilliard School with additional studies at Columbia University and holds a Tier 1 Exceptional Talent Visa in the United Kingdom.